Wyatt Yates Host 00:00 Money doesn't have to be complicated. You can achieve financial independence. This podcast gets to the truth behind the money mess you hear from your grandma, your broke uncle, the latest social media influencers and the so-called money experts. Welcome to Money Myths with your host, wyatt Yates. This week's myth is you need a college degree to be successful. 00:29 Now this myth is pushed onto us from a variety of sources, whether it be the institutions that want to get your money for you to come to their school to pay to get an education through them, whether it be the media or relative or your parents. We hear this a lot, that and it's a common belief that we believe we need to have that college degree to be able to be successful. If we don't have it, we're gonna be left behind or we're not gonna be as marketable in the employment workforce. Now there are some fields that a college degree is a prerequisite. You have to have that degree to be able to go into that field. If you want to be a doctor or a nurse or an attorney or an accountant or a teacher, you're gonna need a college degree. You're gonna need that piece of paper to be able to get into that field and into that profession. So it's not necessarily completely false that you need a college degree to be successful. Depending on what you want to do, you may need one, but to think everybody needs a college degree and that you can't be successful unless you have one is false. I mean, a third of the billionaires in the US don't have a college degree. The likes of Bill Gates, mark Zuckerberg, ted Turner, larry Ellison, steve Jobs, michael Dell, jack Dorsey, richard Branson, walt Disney didn't have one, henry Ford didn't have one, and the list goes on. So you can be successful without a college degree. It's gonna depend on what you want to do, on whether or not you need one. 02:21 The most value that a college education provides is the education part. It's not the piece of paper. It's what you learn when you're there and the classes you take. That is where the value is, in the skills you develop during that, and you don't have to go to college to get that education or acquire those skills or develop those skills. We are in the information age. You can literally learn everything you learn with a college degree on your own, whether it be taking an online course or seminar or certification or or reading a book. You literally have the best minds in the world now are giving back their their publishing books on how they did, what they did or what they've learned. Information is all over the place. You don't necessarily have to go to college to learn. You can get that same education without college. It's just gonna depend on what you're going into. 03:25 But just because you don't have a college degree doesn't mean you can't have the same education, develop the same skills. You don't need a college degree to start your own business. That's what all those billionaires that don't have a college degree did. They started their own business. There's business owners all over the country that don't have college degrees that make very good money. There's high paying jobs that don't require degrees. I just sent out a list of the top 25 and they range from anywhere median salaries of $100,000 to $60,000 per year without a college degree. So you don't have to have it. 04:06 But you do have to have an education and you do have to develop skills, and it makes no sense to burden yourself with a ton of student loan debt for an education you can't afford, for something that you don't even need the degree for or you're unsure of what you wanna do. So don't go into a bunch of debt to get a degree that, at the end of the day, you may not even need. That's one big takeaway here. If you are unclear on what you want to do, the best way to figure out what you want to do is to get experience in a bunch of different areas. So in going to school is not gonna get you the experience in those areas. So you have to really think through what you wanna do and if it's a requirement, just because you don't have a degree, if you're sitting right now and you say I don't have a college degree, should I go back to school? Maybe, maybe not, and you don't need to be beating yourself up for not having one. 05:10 Employers don't care. Maybe your first employer after school cares that you have your degree. After that, employers would look at what's your experience? What are your skills? What do you bring to the table? Do you fit our culture? Those are all things that employers are concerned about. They're not concerned about your degree. They wanna know if you're gonna provide value and add value to their company and they're gonna get a return on their investment in you. That's all they care about. So your focus needs to always be on continuing to educate yourself, continuing to learn. You're a lifelong learner. You're always learning. You're always acquiring new skills. That's how you're gonna add value. That's how you're gonna be an employee that generates more value for the company and the company gets a return on their investment and they, in turn, are able to pay you more. That's how you get to make more money. The more money you bring in, the more value you add, the more money you're gonna make. So let's just summarize this real quick and get to our action step for the week. 06:16 So the myth was you need a college degree to be successful, and it's all around us. It's pushed from a variety of sources onto us and it is true in certain fields. You do need that degree if you want to be a doctor or an attorney or accountant or a teacher. There are certain fields that that piece of paper is a requirement and you're going to need, but for the majority of professions and the majority of fields and what employers are looking at it really doesn't matter. So, as I said, a third of the billionaires don't have a college degree. We are surrounded by information. With the internet and books and all these successful people putting out how they did it and their information, you have the ability to learn more now from successful people than you ever have in history. 07:11 So your first focus should always be on educating and learning, and you don't need an institution to do that. You don't need a college degree to do that. You can do that on your own and you can do it anytime. It was Mark Twain who said I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. You can always be learning, and you should be, and you should always be looking at how can I acquire more skills, and that is how you're going to add value. That's how you're going to be able to make more money. 07:49 So, for the action step this week is to think of one way that you can educate yourself or acquire a new skill. Maybe it's that book you want to read, or a certification you want to get that doesn't necessarily require a college degree. So think of at least one skill or thing that you want to learn that you can start today. What is that certification you want to work towards? There's many certifications and a variety of professions that you can pay a couple hundred bucks to take a class and take the test and get certified in, or spend twenty bucks on that book that you've been wanting to read that you haven't got to. 08:35 So think of one skill or thing you want to learn. Write it down and develop a plan to start going after it. Start increasing your knowledge and developing those skills that are going to increase your income. Thanks for listening. I'm Wyatt, and if you found this episode interesting, subscribe to the podcast so you can make sure you get all the future episodes. Also, leave a rating and review so you can help us grow this podcast, so we can leave more people to financial independence. And lastly, please take a screenshot of the episode, share it on your social media channels and tag us using at rugged financial. We will see you later.